NFL players and personnel often have trouble dealing with ties, and the Commanders and Giants were no exception.
The NFC East rivals ended their Week 13 game tied at 20-all, and even Ron Rivera, who is in his 12th year as a head coach, wasn’t sure how to feel after the contest.
“I addressed them and I really wasn’t sure how to address them,” Rivera said, per the AP. “We came up here and expected to win. We didn’t. We tied. It doesn’t hurt us. It doesn’t help us because these are the guys we are competing with right now.”
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Indeed, Rivera’s explanation rang true in the Commanders’ locker room. Many didn’t know how to feel about the loss, and one member of the team, left tackle Charles Leno Jr., had a… colorful way to explain the feeling.
“I heard this from one of my coaches: It’s like you kissed your sister,” Leno said, per Nicki Jhabvala of The Washington Post.
Leno didn’t stop there. He went on to explain why it was an appropriate analogy for the situation.
It makes sense. Think about it. If you were a kid back in the day, ‘Oh, did you kiss a girl? No. But I kissed my sister.’ It’s not technically a win. But it’s not a loss.
Leno’s statement is certainly odd, but the adage has actually been around for decades. It was originally popularized by Navy coach Eddie Erdelatz after the Midshipmen played a scoreless tie against Duke on Nov. 9, 1953, and it has popped up from time to time across sports since then.
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So, there is a precedent for this comparison, and it’s likely that the coach who shared this with Leno is well-read on the history of football.
The image invoked by the phrase and Leno’s comment may still perturb some, but at least it’s better than former Royals star George Brett’s comparison for losing.
“If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out,” Brett famously said.
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